Artist's Statement
After abandoning the ghost stories, I focused on more documentary work and patch-work panoramas coupled with the research of multiple facilities including closures, lawsuits, and patient abuse. This brought me to the idea of deinstitutionalization, a term give to the policy of moving the mentally ill out of the large institutions. Many of the facilities were abandoned as they were when operational; toys, clothes, equipment were left in place. Despite the absence of people, their presence is felt through the belongings left behind and in my work.
My current body of work is focused on abandonment as a whole, the beauty in decay and what is left behind, and nature’s way of taking back the landscape. My interest shifted from the history of a place being told through archives and books, rather than the history that is being told with what has been left behind.
